Youthful experiences Among the later reviewers of his work, Radu Constantinescu, Algeria Simota, Octav Păun and
Marin Sorescu argued that Dionisie was born as "Dumitru" at
Pietrari,
Vâlcea County. Sorescu, alongside scholars such as Constantinescu and
Lucian Boia, gave his birth year as 1759. Such information was rectified and amended by historians Dumitru Bălașa and Nicolae Stoicescu. As reported by them, Dionisie, known rather as "Dimitrie", was born at
Stoenești, just northeast of Pietrari, "in or around 1740". He was also of confirmed "peasant origin", Various records mention that he completed a primary-school education in Stoenești. He returned to his home village as a married priest; it was only after the death of his wife that he decided to take orders, possibly by entering
Horezu Monastery. According to Sorescu, during his training he was colleagues with
Naum Râmniceanu, himself a future historian, with a similar take on world affairs. Dionisie's life, mostly spent in the Wallachian subregion of
Oltenia (the
Great Banship), coincided with the mid-to-final stages of the Phanariote period. Wallachia and
Moldavia, as the Romanian-inhabited
Danubian Principalities, were governed by a
Greek administrative class, which had also integrated with the local boyardom. Constantinescu notes that, in Dionisie's day, Phanariote dynasties had abandoned their early practice of regulating the "despotic system of taxation", and, beginning with
Ștefan Racoviță's reign in the 1760s, were pushing for all-out spoliation. As summarized by historian
Neagu Djuvara, this era saw the Princes (also known as
hospodars) entirely committed to "obtain[ing] that which they desire[d] through lawlessness, preying, and villainy". The two countries were likewise
tributary polities of the Ottoman Empire. Their sovereignty had been much reduced under the Phanariotes, who, in addition to displaying "a near-complete fidelity toward the
Porte, down to 1774", also exposed their subjects to intense
Hellenization. In that context, Dionisie the chronicler illustrated the "natural reactions against Greek influence". The
Russo-Turkish War of 1768 was a major event in Romanian history. It concluded in 1774 with the
Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca, which signaled a
decline of the Ottoman Empire, as well as "sweeping contacts with the West and with Russia" for both Principalities. As noted in his later chronicle, this period was one of "terrible oppression" under the Ottomans, who went as far as to publicly humiliate the boyars and their retinues. Also evidencing himself as a calligrapher and archivist, widely seen as very intellectually gifted, Dionisie climbed rather quickly through the religious hierarchy, from
Hieromonk to Ecclesiarch of the
Râmnic Archdiocese. The future chronicler became educated by 18th-century standards. Sorescu describes Dionisie's "wonderful lettering" in
Romanian Cyrillic,
Church Slavonic, as well as
Latin; the same author takes this to mean that Eclesiarhul was a polyglot, in addition to being exceptionally versed in the canons of Orthodoxy. Dionisie, who once detailed his efforts in rendering Slavonic documents (calling the language
sârbie, "
Serbian"), was also familiar with Russian, and, at an unknown date, translated into Romanian a tract called
Stavrofilia, as
Calea împărătească a crucii Domnului. Păun suggests that he could understand not just Slavonic and Russian, but also
Ottoman Turkish. Literary historian Tudor Nedelcea similarly notes that Dionisie could speak several languages, and also that he seemed to have grasped geography (including
topography) and
arithmetic. Constantinescu likewise argues that Dionisie "was not a man of high learning". Despite numerous opportunities to improve himself, he is only known to have read some four works of theology and at least one chronicle. fishing, in a 1792 illustration attributed to Dionisie In 1786, Dionisie penned a three-volume register of the Bishopric. he also reports learning from a
Logothetes aide in Bucharest that soldiers of the Habsburg and
Imperial Russian armies, who together occupied the city, were engaged in raucous fistfights which entertained the Wallachians. In 1789, Dionisie was a refugee in the
Transylvania and
Habsburg Hungary, leaving an account of his travels there. According to Păun, he shared this temporary home with Naum. Simota believes that Filaret took both his monks with him, passing through
Petrovaradin. The detail about Buda, she notes, can be traced to Dionisie's description of the
Királyi Vár.
Marginalization and retirement Dionisie returned to
Râmnicu Vâlcea at some point in or before 1791, when the
Treaty of Sistova was brokered, and proceeded to copy a register for the monastic community in
Strehaia. He was probably escaping the plague epidemic, which took him to Strehaia,
Sadova (in 1792), Jitianu (1793), and
Drăgășani (1794). It also appears that he then fell out of favor with Filaret's successors, which is why he had to renounce his position at the Archdiocese. He returned to regular monastic life, passing through
Bistrița,
Govora, and finally
Arnota. Constantinescu believes that it was only in the early 1790s that Dionisie trained as a watercolorist (
zugrav de subțire), being directly supervised by Ioan Zugrav and, possibly, by Manea Zugrav as well. Also in 1795, Dionisie wrote down his Romanian translation of a 17th-century Slavonic writ by Prince
Radu Mihnea, which is also a social document regarding the nature of
serfdom in Wallachia. The scribe elicited some controversy for suggesting that the serfs had been "bound to the land" by order of an earlier ruler,
Michael the Brave. While his translation was used as a main source of information by modern historians beginning with
Nicolae Bălcescu, it is criticized as inaccurate by
Constantin C. Giurescu, who believes that the incriminated words were not present in the Mihnea original (but rather added by Dionisie). At some point before 1796, he copied and translated Slavonic diplomas from the Tismana archives, attributed to
Sigismund of Luxemburg,
Holy Roman Emperor (whom he knew as
Zicmond) and
John Hunyadi (
Ianoș). Unbeknown to him, these were forgeries prepared by the local monks to protect their rights during the
fist Habsburg occupation of Oltenia (). By 1799, Dionisie was known to be working on another register, for the monks of Titireciul, in
Ocnele Mari. He became a
ktitor (founder) of
skete in
Mănăilești, Vâlcea, and was depicted as such in its murals, done in 1801 by Dinu of Craiova. In Dionisie's main historical narrative,
Hronograful Țerei Românești, wartime episodes are followed by his bemoaning of Oltenia's devastation by the Ottoman warlord
Osman Pazvantoğlu, which had taken place in and around 1802; the story contains outstanding detail, from things Dionisie describes as "written down in my heart". Sorescu reads a "hint of admiration" for Pazvantoğlu's legalism and audacity, but also "dark skepticism" regarding the region's prospects for recovery. Dionisie appears to have been living in Craiova during February 1804, when he was commissioned as a calligrapher by the monks of Arnota and
Urșani. His career peaked again later that year, when he returned as Ecclasiarch of the Metropolis in Bucharest, where he also served as a and teacher of Slavonic. or 1813, His political ideas and lifetime lessons were conflated in
Hronograful Țerei Românești, which he began writing at Craiova in 1814; its date of completion is unknown, given as 1815 by Simota and Sorescu, as 1818 by Constantinescu, and as 1820 by Nedelcea. The final parts are direct accounts of unfolding events, including those of January 1815, when
Receb Ağa and his rebels of
Ada Kaleh ransacked Craiova, while rogue
Pandurs acted as warlords in other parts of Oltenia. Also included are minute accounts of very recent international events, such as the
Hundred Days, with a complete translation of
Tsar Alexander's
demands from the people of Paris.
Hronograful itself suggests that such information came to Wallachia by means of gazettes and biographies, avidly sought after by boyars such as Barbu C. Știrbei; Constantinescu writes that the Ecclesiarch was himself a follower of the press, which he mostly read through digests published in Buda. According to researchers Cornelia Papacostea-Danielopolu and Lidia Demény, it is an established fact that both Dionisie and Naum compiled news picked up from
Efimeris and other newspapers of the
Modern Greek Enlightenment, arriving in the
Austrian Empire. Simota similarly believes that his views were shaped by "minor works of anti-French propaganda", imported from the West; around that time, he translated from German an account of the
French campaign in Russia, and another one dealing with the
Battle of Waterloo (both were published at Buda, in 1814 and 1815, respectively). this was followed by beadrolls for the priest in Craiova's Șimnicu de Jos community (1814) and the monks of
Țânțăreni (1816), between which he penned a deed to the estate of
Sutești (1815). He had come to live exclusively from his craft, leaving complaints about his declining eyesight and dexterity, as well as about his chest being "hurt from within". His income dwindling, he now accepted commissions from civilian entities, such as a fragment of
Constantine Harmenopoulos'
Hexabiblos, done for Captain Constantin Zătreanu in 1817. Before July of the following year, he was fulfilling a commission for the register of Obedeanu Monastery, but complained about not being able to finish work without hiring an apprentice. He was directed to seek help among the monks of Jitianu, but refused to move there; he was instead sponsored by Jitianu, Bucăvăț, and two other monasteries, with a monthly stipend of 30 thaler. The monk died in poverty, "probably in 1820", though Constantinescu and his fellow art expert Mariana Șenilă-Vasiliu both propose 1821, coincidentally the date of a
large-scale anti-Phanariote uprising in Oltenia. ==Literary work and ideology==